Now You See Him Now You Don't

New! Starting a Quilt Along Sept 23rd. Finish this by Christmas. Click here.


You need to back away from your computer to really get the full effect of this quilt.It gets much clearer as you move away. It was purposefully made to be difficult to see up close. 

Can you see him? It's Mr. Spock.

This is my entry for the Spring 2011 online Blogger's Quilt Festival. It's also my newest quilt. It's titled "Fascinating" since that's Spock's answer to most everything.

 It measures 58 x 82 inches.

 Almost all the quilts I make have been given away as gifts or donations. This time I wanted to make something fun that my husband would enjoy. This really started out as a half baked idea. Since we like all things sci-fi I found a great pumpkin carving template of Mr. Spock. I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it though. I was getting tired of applique and needed something different. After several months of pondering I decided to try a scrappy quilt. I wanted the quilt to be very chaotic and scrappy up close but reveal an image as you backed away from it. Well, I LOVE IT! It turned out better than I ever expected it to. I learned a lot about tints, shades and tones while working on this.

Design Wall

This was a create as you go project with no real pattern. So I can only explain the process steps in detail for you.

I started with the pumpkin carving template of Spock found at pink ray gun

 I cropped and scanned the image into a cross stitch chart generator to get a grid over it. This step took a few tries to get what I wanted.

The colors didn't matter so much but they had to fall into the category of light or dark. More about how I picked my fabrics in this post.

Layout and Cutting

 Next I began to mark off my block sections. I didn't want the uniformity of visible rows so I pieced large sections and then put the sections together at random spots.

So I wouldn't get lost between sewing sessions I colored in the sections that were finished with a high light marker.

The Cutting Math

To keep it simple my scale was 1 inch = 1 square on the grid. I cut each piece 1/2 larger in length and width to allow for the seams (1/4 inch seam on both sides).

For example. I need a piece that is 2 grid squares by 3 grid squares on my chart. So I cut a piece of fabric that is 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches.

Hope you enjoyed the quilt!